Appearance and reality in the literary works read this year has been abundant in both short stories, and novels. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Charlotte Perkins’ The Yellow Wallpaper appearance exists contrary to reality; shown through Hamlet’s act of madness, Gatsby’s origin stories, and the sway of the yellow wallpaper over the main characters, the narrator and John. In Hamlet, the title character shows a double visage to those around him, mad when around others, yet completely sane in private. This is shown in act II scene ii when Hamlet, alone, said “I’ll have grounds / More relative than this.The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.”, in this he demonstrates the logical, sane part of himself by organising this, knowing that he needs more evidence than the ghost of his father to accuse the king (II,ii,565-567). His appearance changes in his encounter with Claudius and Polonius in act III scene ii, spouting, as they view it, inane rambling when Claudius asks how he is, “Excellent, i' faith, of the chameleon’s dish. I eat the air, /…show more content… This is contrasted by her husband John’s view of the wallpaper, something ugly and needing replacement. The appearance of the yellow wallpaper, to the narrator, is her part of her reality and no one else’s, “There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.” (Perkins, 112). John views the wallpaper to be just that, wallpaper, albeit an ugly pattern, “He laughs at me so about his wall-paper (Perkins, 108).This shows the narrator and John’s conflicting view of the wallpaper, the deep patterns of the yellow wallpaper to the narrator, and the plain scratchy wallpaper to John. The theme of appearance vs. reality is prevalent as pertaining to The Yellow Wallpaper for these